Cathy artist statement

Hello Everybody. Julie asked us to post our statements from last semester:

Cathy McLaurin Artist Statement

My process involves observing and thinking about what is happening in the world around me, and creating a response to it. I take something that is difficult or complicated and find a way to own it and convey that to the viewer. The viewer is left to organize their own story in response to what they have experienced.

I am interested in the uses and meanings connoted by materials and objects. I use common materials and objects - furniture/carpets, articles of clothing, sleeping or duffle bags - in unusual ways, engaging the viewer's senses of sight, smell, and touch. These situations work in a lingering way rather than an instant way, allowing for a philosophical pondering of meaning. Absurdity is employed to allow for contradictions in meaning. Common themes in my work are: temporality, memory, cultural displacement, and impermanence. Global events, everyday encounters, the work of Francis Bacon, and animal movement breed images and ideas that I incorporate into my work.

My practice is research-based, interdisciplinary, employing whatever process is most appropriate for the concept - painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, video. I am especially interested in the performance form as transformation. My studio is wherever I am at a given moment.